Chainsaw
.]] .]] The chainsaw mutilates enemies close enough to contact. At 525 hits per minute, it is roughly a quadruple-speed fist. It is often used, because it conserves ammo, its "rapid fire" works well on enemies with high pain chance which minimizes damage in melee situations, and because of its gory implications. When picked up, the message is "A Chainsaw! Find some meat!". The TV advertisement for the Super Nintendo port showed numerous instances of the player chainsawing Imps and Demons, intercut with images of butchers at a slaughterhouse/meat factory. Strangely the chainsaw appears to have no discernible reason to be on Phobos as the moon appears to be devoid of plant life. This is parodied in Doom 3 by having a chainsaw shipment being a mistake. It is considered to be most effectively used against Demons and Spectres, since the player can more than likely kill them without taking damage. The chainsaw's disadvantage is its slow killing speed, compared to the berserk fist, which becomes a liability when facing multiple enemies and in open areas. Expert players confronted by a pack of Demons and Spectres back into a corner and chainsaw them down one by one (if the corner is less than 107 degrees wide, only one Demon can attack at a time). It can also be used fairly effectively against Cacodemons, Pain Elementals, Lost Souls, and Imps. It is ineffective against Hell Knights and other demons with powerful ranged attacks. The chainsaw is effectively rendered useless against Demons and Imps if the game parameter is set to Fast Monsters (such as in Nightmare difficulty), since these monsters' melee attacks are three times as fast. The chainsaw first appears in a secret area of the level E1M2: Nuclear Plant, and appears again in secret areas of E1M3: Toxin Refinery and E1M5: Phobos Lab. It is finally found in a non-secret area on E2M6: Halls of the Damned. In vanilla Doom, if a player has a chainsaw, they cannot switch back to the fists unless they have a berserk pack. Most modern source ports allow toggling of the fists and chainsaw by pressing "1" (as with the two shotguns in Doom II). The chainsaw can be obtained via the cheat codes idchoppers, idfa or idkfa. Notes * Switching to the chainsaw means that there is a continuous buzzing from the chainsaw motor. When "fired", the chainsaw is shoved forward and the buzzing changes to a higher and even more intense whine. Like gunfire or a fist punch, attacking with the chainsaw will alert monsters in open areas, however merely switching to the chainsaw will not. Players who often want to provoke enemies into finding them can "fire" the chainsaw, without wasting ammo. * The chainsaw graphics are based on scans of a real chainsaw, a McCulloch Eager Beaver (borrowed by Tom Hall from his girlfriend). * Due to a limitation of the game engine, the chainsaw does not penetrate its victims; instead, it repeatedly re-aligns the player's position to give the effect of being 'locked' with the target. This can be observed by simultaneously sawing a demon and attempting to turn with the mouse. * If the menu is accessed or the game is paused while the player attacks with the chainsaw, the weapon will buzz in a strange, high pitch for a moment. * The chainsaw "rev up" sound (DSSAWUP) is played when the player switches weapons to the chainsaw. Normally it is not played in its entirety, as the sound is cut off by the normal sound effect made by the chainsaw while selected (DSSAWIDL). It can be heard in its entirety by switching weapons to the chainsaw from any other weapon, and immediately pausing the game; and is also played completely when a new level starts with the active weapon being a chainsaw (see Intermission screen#Chainsaw sound effect). * Doom 64's chainsaw is drastically different in terms of appearance. The saw has two blades instead of one (and therefore doubling the damage) and the letters "U.A.C." are engraved on top of the weapon. Data The chainsaw can inflict approximately 94.47 points of damage per second: #This table assumes that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, and blood splats are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: counterattacks and AI pathfinding must be handled, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). Any resulting errors are probably toward the single-shot average, as they introduce noise into the correlation between the indices of "consecutive" calls. #Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map. #Due to errors in the line-of-sight algorithms of vanilla Doom (see Spider paralysis), it is sometimes impossible to keep the chainsaw in continuous contact with a wide monster. Appearance statistics The IWADs contain the following numbers of chainsaws: See also * UV Tyson * Chainsaw (Doom 3) External links * DOOM Weapon Damage Information by George Bell * ROME.RO Photo Galleries: Eager Beaver